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Olympus 50mm lenses
Thre
are two common Olympus OM 50mm lenses, the 50mm f/1.4 which typically
sells around $100 and the Olympus 50mm f/1.8 which goes for $20-50. I
initially bought the 50mm f/1.4 but some reports say the OM 50mm f/1.8
is better at comparable apertures, so on a lark I bought the 50mm f/1.8
too. As I did not find any side by side comparisons, I thought I'd
throw these up. Of course these are older, used lenses, and just one of
each, so sample variation may play a huge role in the performance.
Typical business; shot raw images on a Sony A7, mounted on a tripod, same shutter speed for each aperture, white balance matched, focused to infinity in 10x live view at widest aperture and finally, converted via ACR with default settings for sharpening, the only non-standard setting if the camera profile being neutral.
Typical business; shot raw images on a Sony A7, mounted on a tripod, same shutter speed for each aperture, white balance matched, focused to infinity in 10x live view at widest aperture and finally, converted via ACR with default settings for sharpening, the only non-standard setting if the camera profile being neutral.
Center and just off center 100% crops.
1200px of the corner crop.
At f/2.8 we truely share an aperture value.
Center
Corners at f/2.8
On to f/4
Centers at 100%
Coners at f/4
Now that the vignetting is the same we'll skip the overall image and go straight to the crops.
At f/5.6 the budget 50mm f/1.8 is sharp across the entire frame, quite impressive. Corners.
Now at f/8
Corners
At infinity there is surprisingly
little difference between the lens. I'd give the Olympus 50mm f/1.4 the
smallest nod for resolution but more CA in the center and wider
apertures, while the f/1.8 version is faster to sharpen up outside the
center. Of course up close performance is another story best seen here.